I'm planning a trip to Europe for August to early Sept. to last about 21 days. I checked the airfare websites like ORBITZ and found that while the fares to get TO places like Paris or Germany were tolerable (to me as a budget guy), the fares to get home again had taxes and fees that were almost as much as the airfare itself. It was blowing my mind! Looking pretty exclusively at ICELANDAIR fares- They were usually the lowest, but perhaps not surprisingly, they were much better at fares to Scandinavia than to the rest of Western Europe or Germany.
Are these high taxes and fees between Europe and N.America a creation of the European governments involved? Can somebody throw me a bone here?
Posted by
Minneapolis
1261 posts
Joel, good question. I looked at Orbitz and I see what you're referring to. Some airlines (e.g. Air Canada) advertise a low base fare and then have ridiculous added fees they refer to as 'fuel surcharge' or similar. these are not govt fees, they are simply airline marketing tactic. My suggestion is to just look and compare the total price - that is all you care about. Suggest you use Expedia instead of Orbitz, it shows total and so is simpler/easier to understand.
Posted by
Tresana, Highlands Ranch, CO, USA
23626 posts
It all is a marketing game. Airlines know that it is extremely important to be listed on the first page and preferably first on the list of flights with the any of the travel search engines. Since all the search engines only track base fare and not total price, the airlines manipulate the base fare to stay low and add it back with "fees". The taxes for all airline on the same route would be similar but the "fees" are solely determined by each airlines. Which is why the airlines with the lowest base fare is not always the cheapest total fare. But I don't understand your first statement. Are you pricing one way tickets to and from Europe. And , if so, why?